Which Way To Nowhere
by alwaysflying
Summary: As the only freshman in a grade eleven English class, Mark has some issues to work out. Most of them involve a classmate of his named Roger.
1. Chapter 1

It is September the tenth, the first day of school at Scarsdale High. The school day will commence at eight-twenty; it is now eight-thirteen. The clock is ticking swiftly, and with students scattered across the lawn and hallways, Mark Cohen is overwhelmed. He is one of many incoming freshman, lost and confused in this new place.

If anyone cared about rules at Scarsdale High, Mark would not have this problem. Last year, when he was in eighth grade, a group of students from the high school came and spoke to his class about a big brothers/big sisters program instated in Scarsdale High School. Each sophomore was to "sponsor" an incoming freshman. That meant that they were to arrange a meeting prior to the beginning of school on the first day, meet up between classes, and become best friends.

Unfortunately for Mark, who had thanked his lucky stars upon hearing about this program, nobody cares about the big brothers/big sisters program at Scarsdale High. At least, not the students. And so, Mark's sponsor, whose name he has forgotten and who failed to communicate with Mark as he was supposed to, has yet to make himself known to Mark. For all Mark knows, he might not even exist.

Alone, standing hesitantly on this new lawn, Mark cannot help but notice the many cigarette butts stamped into the ground. A student not too far away from him has a cigarette in her mouth, and is laughing, blowing smoke out into the air. Mark recoils. His parents have always preached against the dangers of smoking, and have assured Mark that if smoke ever comes out of his mouth, the same orifice will be sanitized – with soap.

Not knowing what else to do, Mark takes his first few steps toward the front door. As he hesitantly moves his leg, Mark is knocked off-course by another person, a boy, stronger and taller than he.

"Sorry," Mark mumbles, well aware that he is clumsy and that this was probably his fault. But the boy only laughs.

"My bad," he assures Mark, and offers an arm to the other boy to help him up.

Mark, startled, considers taking the proffered hand when he hears a bellowed name. "_Roger_!" someone howls from the distance. It is a boy with a football, and Mark makes the connection: obviously, this boy standing next to him is Roger, and he ran into Mark because he was trying to catch the football. Feeling rather pleased with himself for having surmised this, Mark decides to stop acting like an idiot and _take Roger's hand _already.

When he reaches up, however, the other boy is already gone, scampering back to meet his friends.

Mark sighs.

Curious, his eyes follow the boy who was just so close to him. He looks him up and down, taking in Roger's long blond hair and tall, athletic frame. He walks and is dressed with confidence, wearing beat-up sneakers that Mark would never dare wear in public for fear of being insulted. He does not walk; he _saunters_, his pace leisurely, as he presumably knows that people will wait for him, and he is young, and has all the time in the world. Even younger though Mark may be, he walks briskly, never wanting to be left behind.

There's no time to stare at people, Mark tells himself harshly, and he forces himself to walk away, adjusting his glasses with one hand, picking at his chapped lips with the other. He is nearly at the door when he spots a pair of teenagers, two or three years older than he is, pressed against the wall. It does not take Mark very long to figure out that their lips are on one another's for a reason, and with averted eyes, he continues walking. He has no interest in their love affairs, and reminds himself that he is here to _learn_, not to involve himself in drama. Friendships, interests, and even potential romance (he scoffs at the very thought) will take a backseat to his studies, and from here on in, he will no longer care what is going on outside of his classroom. These are the firm resolutions Mark makes to himself as he joins the crowd surrounding the front door.

"What time is it?" he hears someone ask.

The response from another student is "Eight-nineteen."

As if on cue, a loud buzzing noise sounds; Mark recognizes it as the bell, something that never existed in middle school but was certainly discussed when students listed the things that would make high school "sophisticated." He cannot see what is so sophisticated about this dull, repulsive sound, infiltrating his ears and threatening to add to the possibility of his developing a migraine. (Prone to headaches, Mark has a "migraine-o-meter in his head, and spends time considering whether or not a headache will come of any particular activity.)

The students begin to flow into the school, and Mark feels like a fish walking straight into the mouth of a hungry shark. He knows that this is suicide, is absurd, is a sure way to get him miserable in only – how long is the school day? Seven hours. But still, he walks, robotically, his feet moving before his brain can instruct that he do anything to the contrary.

Once inside the building, Mark thanks everything under the sun that he took the time to memorize the first room number his schedule lists that he go to. Monday, first period – English for grade eleven, since Mark is one of the rare students with enough proficiency in English to be permitted to take the class on a more advanced grade level. He shudders at the thought of what the other juniors' reactions will be upon discovering that their class is being infiltrated by a lowly freshman, a nerdy boy with glasses and button-down shirts.

The room number is three-oh-nine. He finds it without much difficulty; there are students behind him and to his left and right that move through the halls expertly, trained from their previous years in this school already. Mark merely glides along with them, eternally grateful for the fact that he has always been a fast walker. He is certain that, were he to walk more slowly, he would be trampled.

That would definitely not be an ideal way to begin his high school career.

As he comes to a halt inside the classroom, Mark looks around. Students lounge around the room, their bags and feet resting on desks, eagerly chattering. Mark quietly settles down at a chair near the back, pulls a book from his backpack (_Fahrenheit 451_, his absolute favorite book of all time), and begins to read.

Three minutes pass.

After those three minutes, just as Montag and Clarisse between the pages of the novel are starting to talk to each other, the class is called to attention. "Assigned seats," the teacher drones, and every student in the class simultaneously gets to his or her feet and begins shuffling to the nearest wall. Mark follows suit, feeling very lost and small. As he gets up to do this, the door swings open, and a boy walks in, accompanied by a girl immediately behind him.

Mark flinches.

Of course, fate would have it that Roger walks into the room.

"Roger," clucks the teacher. "Late."

Roger laughs. "By some standards," he cackles. "But why not address my peer?" he adds, gesturing at the student standing behind him. "Mo was late too."

"But I don't know their names," the teacher points out. "Now. As for your seats, students," she adds, addressing the entire class, "you will be seated alphabetically, according to your last names." She points at the first desk first and begins rattling off names, from Adams to Brooks. After those five names, she points at the first desk in the second row and declares, "Cohen. Welcome to eleventh grade English, freshman."

The class buzzes, and Mark, staring at his feet, walks to the seat in question. As he sits down, the teacher calls, "Davis," and the seat next to Mark is filled by none other than Roger.

Mark whimpers quietly, and Roger jerks his head up to look at his seatmate. The two desks are pushed together, as are the rest of the desks in the room; every two desks are shoved against each other, thus establishing pairs for any partner work that might be assigned in class. "You're a freshman," Roger declares flatly. "Why are you in this class?"

With a shrug, Mark mumbles, "I'm an okay writer."

"You're a _freshman_," Roger repeats. "That means you're in a class _two grades higher than yours_. You're obviously a pretty good one."

Again, Mark shrugs. "Not that good."

"Well, neither am I," Roger laughs, and to Mark it sounds like Roger is subtly trying to order him to do all his homework for the rest of the year. He sighs. It isn't as though he hasn't been asked this before, so Mark shrugs and mumbles some sort of assent. Roger looks at him oddly for a moment, then turns away, glancing two rows back to mouth something to his friend Maureen, who is sandwiched between a boy and girl that Mark saw kissing earlier. He shudders. That would be an awkward seating arrangement.

"Hey," says Roger, nudging Mark.

Mark looks up. "Yeah?"

Roger grins wickedly, holding up a folded piece of paper. "Pass this to Maureen?"

With nothing else to do, Mark does, and looks back to Roger for some sort of approval. He doesn't even know why he is doing it, just that he desperately craves Roger's attention. But all he sees in Roger's eyes is laughter, a smile tickling at his lips as he cranes his neck backwards to meet Maureen's eyes.

Mark wonders what his life would be like had he been born a girl.

With that alarming thought in his head, he hastily pulls out his book and begins rifling through the pages, perusing a passage in which he can lose himself so that he does not do the same in his own thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2

\Mark hurries through the halls, trying to be twice as fast as everyone else so as not to get trampled on or shouted at. At the same time, however, he makes an effort not to walk fast enough to trample anyone _else_ – some poor, defenseless freshman or fierce, burly senior.

Of course, in his effort _not _to disturb anyone or get himself noticed, Mark stumbles on another person's foot.

"Sorry," he mutters, not looking up from his schedule, which says that his next class is gym, which will consist of freshmen and sophomores. _Great. I'll be running around with a bunch of kids who're just looking to see who has the best legs._

The kid looks Mark up and down. Suddenly self-conscious, Mark glances up at her. And of course… it's Maureen. Roger's friend. _Fuck_. "Hi," Mark mumbles.

"Hey. What class are you looking for?"

"Gym," Mark replies dully. Then he thinks that a guy like Roger is probably an athlete, and mentally curses himself for sounding so averse to physical activity. _Shit_. "Not that I don't like sports or anything," he adds hastily.

Maureen nods, apparently unfazed. "Well, I can show you where that is. C'mon, walk with me. It's by the front doors, and I was going to skip my next class anyway."

Mark gazes at her with some mixture of admiration, awe and shock. "_Really_? You can just… do that?"

"Oh, _sure_," she laughs. "It's easy. Fuckin' security guard can't tell a skippin' student from a hole in the ground, the stupid bitch."

"Is that… safe?"

Maureen raises her eyebrows.

"Uh, never mind," Mark mumbles.

Suddenly there is a tap on Mark's shoulder. He looks to his left, where Maureen is whistling casually. She jerks her chin upward.

Before Mark and Maureen is a door of a slightly darker color than those which lead to classrooms. "GYMNASIUM" is stamped above the doorpost in dark red letters, beneath which it reads "PLEASE WAIT FOR TEACHER BEFORE ENTERING."

"Thanks!" Mark exclaims with a smile. "See you."

Maureen shrugs. "No problem."

With that, Mark files into a line waiting outside the gym, presumably awaiting the arrival of the teacher, who according to Mark's schedule is named Mrs. Critharis. Is that _Cri_tharis? Mark wonders idly. Or Cri_tha_ris? Or even Critha_ris_?

He is distracted when a slim, dark-haired woman steps out of the doorway. "Class!" she calls, and with a snap of her bitten fingernails, she beckons for the students to enter the gymnasium.

With a sigh of relief, Mark flows inside with the others, invisible in the line of what seems like a million students.

He disappears into the gymnasium, but cannot seem to focus on the class with Roger on his mind.

---

"Dodgeball!" howls Mrs. Critharis, waving a red rubber ball around in the air.

With a low, exaggerated sigh, Mark grumbles, "It always is."

With that, he dives for safety behind the bleachers.

---

As it turns out, Mrs. Critharis is not fond of students choosing to hide from the game. She drags Mark by his collar back into the game, snapping, "I should make you run _suicides _for this, kid. What's your name?"

Wisely, Mark replies, "Tom Jefferson."

"No, it isn't," Mrs. Critharis replies swiftly.

Mark chooses not to respond.

"Is it?"

"Yes, ma'am," Mark answers.

"Fine. Then get back in the game, Jefferson."

---

High-schoolers are _vicious_, Mark learns quickly, and while he's always known that they are vicious with their words, they are even more monstrous with rubber balls and adrenaline. The seniors steal balls from whoever they feel like, the juniors from the sophomores and freshmen, and the sophomores and freshmen from each other. Still, at the echoing _ahem _of eleventh-grade Benny Coffin, everyone has decided that it is safest to surrender all weapons in an instant, then scurry away.

While all the seniors and juniors are brutal, Coffin is doubtlessly the worst.

"Fork it over, freshman," he growls, extending a hand to Mark, who has a ball cradled in the crook of his elbow.

"But I – "

"_Now_," Benny elaborates. "In case that wasn't clear. Give me. The. Ball."

For effect, Benny decides to fire a punch at Mark, hitting him right in the mouth. Mark, who was in the process of a yawn, clamps his lips shut just in time. Still, the punch hurts. Instinctively, Mark raises a hand to his mouth once Benny draws his fist away. When Mark removes his hand from his lips, it comes away bloody.

Without so much as a squeak, Mark thrusts the ball toward Benny, held in both hands, his neck craned backward to keep as much distance between him and the burly upperclassman as possible.

"_Thank _you," Benny grunts, and waddles away.

Mark is vaguely certain that despite his split lip, Mrs. Critharis will not follow the wonderful example of the middle-school physical education teachers and allow her wounded student to go see the nurse.

Then again, Mark noticed a funny look about Nurse Paul anyway. It might be better just to have his mother fix it at home.

As he suffers through the last half hour of class, Mark tries to catch a glimpse of Maureen outside, through the window, just so he can have something to wish for that isn't Roger. But the second he sees her out there, dragging on her cigarette, Mark spies that familiar blonde right beside her and, wincing, looks away.

It seems that when his personal demons aren't there to haunt him, Roger is.

And when Roger isn't, there's always Benny, who comes up to Mark toward the end of the period and shoves the dodgeball into Mark's chest.

"Thanks," Mark mumbles.

"You got it, freshman," Benny growls.

Mark drops the dodgeball on the ground and edges away, only breaking into a run once he has reached the line separating the two halves of the gymnasium. He slams into the wall on the other side, panting.

And still all he can think about is Roger.

_Oh, fuck_.


	3. Chapter 3

Mark walks through the halls, searching for his next class. He is certain that he has been in every hallway by now, checked every door, asked every burly senior who crossed his path. Still no answer.

_Where is it? _

Room nine-oh-seven. Even the number doesn't make sense in his mind, doesn't sound right, doesn't roll off the tongue as well as his previous classes. This one is a debate class, designed for inter-grade competition; a fourth of the class belongs to each individual grade.

The numbers of the classrooms, however, seem to stop at seven hundred. Mark is bewildered. This one is in the nine hundreds, so where could it possibly be?

"Uh, hi," Mark said, tapping someone on the shoulder. "Do you know where nine-oh-seven is?"

The boy gives him an appraising look. "Right in front of you," he drawls.

"But – "

Mark spins around to check the number on the door in front of him, which is, indeed, nine-oh-seven. He blushes. "Thanks," he mumbles.

"Whatever," the boy mutters, and ambles away.

A few moments and footsteps later, Mark is inside. The door closes loudly behind him, and all eyes turn to face the newcomer. His face is pink, almost red. "Uh… hi," he squeaks. After clearing his throat, Mark adds, "I'm Mark. I… got lost."

"Freshman," a kid mutters, faking a violent cough.

Mark winces, looking hopefully at the teacher.

"Sit down, freshman," she says at last, pointing to a seat in the very front. As Mark makes his way to the seat in question, the teacher commences what she was saying before Mark's rude interruption of her class. "Now. As I was saying, this class will run for a semester. Everybody in this school takes debate, which means that I have far too many students. Who here had me last year?"

Most of the hands go up. Mark pales. Will he be the only student who does not understand the material?

"Great," the teacher says, whistling cheerfully. "So you know what I expect. For those of you who are freshmen or new to this school, let me explain. I will divide everybody in the entire school up into groups of two. The students in the groups will in the same debate class, but they will not be in the same grade. I'm going to try my best to get you to work with someone you don't know, so that you can meet new people and get new ideas."

She pauses. "What will happen is that the class will be assigned a topic. Yes, the entire class. It will be current, modern, relevent, and something that interests you, as teenagers. I promise. With this topic, each pair will decide who will take either side. I do not care if you both want the same side. _Choose_. If you cannot choose, I will choose for you. But enough of that," she adds breathlessly, taking a sip from her Poland Springs. "I think that's enough explaining, don't you?"

A kid from the back calls, "Hey, Jace?"

"_Mrs. _Jace," the teacher reminds him dully.

"Jace!" the kid shouts again. "You forgot to mention my favorite part of the class!"

Mrs. Jace nods, setting her water down on the desk beside her. "At the end of the year," she says, "I will choose the three pairs with the _best _debate, and you will present your debates for the school at an assembly."

Mark quickly resolves to do as poorly as possible.

"I have already assigned partnerships," she adds cheerfully. "Alphabetically."

Suddenly horror-struck, Mark slowly turns around.

Sure enough, there is a certain boy sitting in the back row, golden curls straggling down the back of his neck. He is leaning back on his chair, his sneakers in the air.

"Mark Cohen… and Roger Davis," Mrs. Jace reads from her list.

Mark closes his eyes for a long moment.

_Is it a dream or a nightmare? _

Roger gathers his belongings, ambles over to Mark, and kicks the seat beside him. "Get out, sophomore," he orders the girl sitting there.

The girl, whose ink-black hair looks dyed and fake, quickly rises from her chair and scampers to the back of the room, presumably to gossip with her friends about how "cute" Roger is.

Ignoring the girl, Roger shrugs into the chair, turning to face Mark. "So, haunting me, are you, freshman?" he teases.

Mark blushes. "I don't see how this keeps happening," he mumbles, embarrassed. "I guess we're really destined to be in the same class, huh?"

Roger shrugs. "Maybe it's just the whole Cohen-Davis thing. It's alphabetical."

With anyone else, Mark would have shot back a "_really_?" But with Roger, he is subdued, and politely nods. "Yeah," he muses thoughtfully. His thoughts, however, are somewhere else entirely.

"So," says Roger as Mrs. Jace continues to assign partnerships, "how are you liking Scarsdale High so far?"

Deciding to be honest, Mark immediately replies, "It's big."

"It's big," Roger repeats, laughing. "It's always been big, Mark, I promise. It'll always _be _big."

"Do you like it?"

Roger appears to ponder this. "Yes and no," he says at last. "Yes, because it's so easy to blend in. And no, because it means I have a shitload of fangirls."

"Fangirls?" Mark repeats.

With a wince, Roger confesses, "My band plays for school dances and stuff. All the freshmen and sophomores seem to think I'm hot stuff."

He pauses.

"Well," Roger adds, chuckling, "we sort of are."

Mark laughs.

"So, do you have a girlfriend?" Mark asks conversationally.

"What? Oh – no. My best friends are dating, and I see them making out so much that I don't think I'll ever be able to kiss anyone." He laughs. "No, no, I have my fantasy girls, and I'd kiss them in a heartbeat, it's just, well, I'm fine not dating anyone. How 'bout you?"

Mark shakes his head. "No girlfriend. Never dated anyone. Kind of pathetic, really."

"Waiting for marriage?"

"Before I start _dating_?" Mark asks incredulously. "How does that work? You don't marry until you're in love, but how do you know you're in love if you've never dated someone?" 

Roger rolls his eyes. "Of course you can know. Love at first sight. Don't you believe in that?"

Mark shakes his head. "Absolutely not. Why – do you?"

After a moment, Mark realizes that Roger would not have brought it up had he not believed it. But no – there comes Roger's answer, thoughtful and quiet: "Well… I never thought of it as something you could choose to or not to believe in. But now that you put it that way… I guess I don't."

Mark smiles.

"Good answer."

"Good question," Roger shoots back.

"Good luck!" calls Mrs. Jace, and pushes her arm aside to reveal the debate topic neatly printed on the board:

_Should schoolwide and classroom libraries be allowed to carry material containing homosexual content?_

Reading this, Mark's jaw drops.

Roger snorts. "Religious, are you?" he drawls. "No problem. I'll take the _yes_ side, you take the _no_."

Amazed at the audacity of his secret love, Mark's eyes widen.


End file.
